MAKI HAYASHIDA’S ARTIST BOOK “THE PACIFIC TOURIST” IS NOW AVAILABLE!

09/05/2016

The book “The Pacific Tourist” is made to mislead the time and place of a landscape photography project.
The project is about Japanese two small islands next to each other. One is called Nozaki Island, a nearly uninhabited island since all the residents have moved out live with the capitalism in 1990s. The other is Ojika Island, where about 2,800 people still co-exists with nature and maintains self-sufficiency and barter. The two islands are where I’ve found a different kind of “good life”. It is the richness not regarding money or efficiency in its untouched nature and the unchanged manner of living with it for years.
The idea of misleading is based on the uniqueness of Japanese thinking patterns. Japanese people have the subconscious to try to find the real culture from foreign countries, not in Japan. This is closely related to the origin of the Japanese ethnicity, because Japan is a so remote and the smallest nation of the numerous islands that we tend to think there must be getter culture somewhere overseas. As for me, it had been the United States for a long time. Any culture from the States seemed to be very cool to me and I’d been longing for it since I was little. However, after I’ve been to Nozaki and and Ojika islands, I came to think what we should learn is perhaps not in the States anymore. It is in Japan itself instead, where simple living with nature still remains.
This photobook represents Nozaki and Ojika Islands as “”foreign country”” where we should go and find, the better culture in this mature modern society.